Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

"Duffy's at Jorge Newbery arranging that," Delchamps said. "Where shortly he will be joined by Sergeant Major Davidson and Corporal Bradley, whom he picked up at Ezeiza. Davidson said the Cherub could sit on Red Underpants while you're visiting Pevsner."

"You must have been pretty sure I was going to go along with this," Castillo said.

"Davidson was. He's also a mutineer, Ace."

"He said he's got his twenty years in," Santini said. "And he's sick of being pushed around by a chickenshit, just-promoted light colonel who's younger than he is."

"Don't take it to heart, Charley," Britton said. "He probably didn't mean it."

"And what do we do with Lester?" Castillo asked.

"The Cherub, I am ashamed to say, did not come up in the course of this conversation," Delchamps said. "I don't think the Marine Corps will let him retire at nineteen. But we'll think of something."

"And now I suggest we go in and have breakfast with our guests," Darby said. "And while we're doing that, the housekeeper will throw a few things in a bag for Colonel Alekseeva, just enough for a day or two of fun and romance in the beautiful Llao Llao Resort and Casino."

Castillo looked at him and after a long moment decided that the word "romance" had gone innocently into what Darby had said.

[TWO]

KM 28.5, Panamericana, Southbound

Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

0820 30 December 2005

"Colonel Castillo," Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva said, "we are being followed by three men in a Peugeot sedan."

They were in Darby's embassy car, an armored BMW with diplomatic license plates and equipped with a shortwave radio. Darby was driving. Castillo was in the front passenger seat holding the puppy, his lap protected by a copy of that day's Buenos Aires Herald, which had been a sanitary/sartorial suggestion of Sandra Britton.

Max and Svetlana Alekseeva were in the backseat. Darby had confided in Castillo that he had switched on the baby locks, a statement that he had to explain to a baffled Castillo, who was grossly ignorant of most things having to do with any aspect of child rearing, and had no idea there was a device available to keep youngsters--and adult female ex-SVR agents--from opening the rear doors of a car once they had been closed on them.

"Not to worry, Colonel," Darby replied. "They're Gendarmeria Nacional. Comandante Duffy doesn't want anything to happen to you before you tell us who ordered the hit on him and his family."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Svetlana said, somewhat plaintively.

"Right," Darby said. "What about that promise you made to Colonel Castillo to tell him everything he wanted to know?"

She did not reply for a moment, but then said, again, somewhat plaintively, "I know nothing about a Comandante Duffy."

"Your call, Colonel Alekseeva," Darby said.

Aside from a general "good morning" addressed to everyone at the breakfast table, Castillo had not said a word to Svetlana--nor she to him until just now--since he'd gotten up.

But this, Castillo realized, was not because he had inadvertently signaled her--or she had somehow figured out--that he now understood the greatest love story since Anna Karenina--or maybe Doctor Zhivago?--was really her putting into practice what she had been taught in How to Be a Successful Spy 101: Fucking Your Way Successfully Through a Difficult Interrogation.

She thinks she still has me in the bag, and that I am just trying to make sure our great romance is kept in the closet.

Which of course means that she thinks she has had enough postcoital experience to be able to judge the morning-after reaction of the interrogator.

She's wrong.

Stupid here finally woke up.

[THREE]

Jet-Stream Aviation

Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Newbery